Where two police officers and three good samaritans laugh when the elderly widow who absolutely does not want to go to the hospital even though she is now bleeding from the head after tripping on the curb  jokes, "My husband beat me!" when the EMT asks her what happened.

Where the kids in the Gifted and Talented kindergarten sing "I'm as
good as I can be, there is no one quite like me... special, special,
special me... I'm as special as can be" as the parents-of-potentially-
gifted-and-talented-children touring the school try to loom less
conspicuously.

Where a boy who is just learning to read follows the city's directions.

Where the CVS employee says, "How I got to know what's in your pocket and what's not in your pocket?" and the man in the wheel chair yells, "I lived in this neighborhoods before you was BORN--I could be your Pops, your POPS!"

Where one of the mothers at Super Soccer Stars is, among other things, French.

Where a woman holding a toddler runs out of Duane Reade, jumps into the front seat and pleads with a man who is in the process of towing her orange mini Cooper.

Where four people claiming to be the FBI but not even pretending to have a warrant yell "Check his pockets! He's the one we're looking for!" and apprehend a fifth person while a young voyeur balances his fear and delight.

Where on Columbus Avenue a man tucks the huge balloon rat's tail under the rat's hind leg so it stops flapping and slapping against the sidewalk like a live fish.

Where in Greenwich Village the girls are unveiling.

Where, while watching the "diva in training" doing live yoga in the window of Lululemon, one man says to another, "This is better than reading the New York Times!"

Where a man says to his daughter, "because it's not your birthday," but then the stranger sitting next to the little girl carefully unwraps a bright red from her many helium balloons and gives it and a sheet of princess stickers and a pencil with unicorn eraser to the very happy not birthday girl.

Where in the Times Square subway station a woman dumps her bags on a wooden bench, hurriedly unsnaps her cloth carrier, frantically wrestles with a bright floral cover and smiles a slow smile as her screaming baby quiets.

Where, walking into the early morning sun on their way to school, a woman and her 12 year old son almost pass a mother and her baby doll perched in the crook of a tree without noticing.

Where the American flag, the Israeli flag and an octopus pennant snap in the wind on the top of an apartment building on 99th street.

Where, after clipping his nails on the 2 express train, the violinist carefully replaces his small gold nail clipper into a green, upholstered compartment in his violin case.

Where on East 57th Street the Prada's sole-affixed price tag is almost but not quite legible in its own reflection.

Where a woman spends half the night reading in a cold, dry hotel bathtub so as not to wake her sleeping, snoring family.

Where an unusually cold, wet winter retreats, leaving, in its wake, a lush field of poppies and other wildflowers at the northern edge of Israel.

Where everything is quiet on the finger of the Galilee.

Where on the back wall of Simchee cleaners on Columbus avenue a clock with the twelve ideograms of the zodiac and Hebrew letters marking the hours is the last vestige of the previous owner.

Where two of the three African American men who respectfully hoot for and raptly listen to poet Nikky Finney, text, tweet and email all through poet Lyn Hejinian's reading.

Where a white man says to the woman next to him, "that's REALLY distracting," and moves his eyes toward the mandala she is noiselessly drawing in her notebook and then he proceeds to make a loud "mmmnnn" appreciation noise during and after each poem Nikky Finney reads.

Where the young writer in the audience at the writer's conference has words tattooed in a jumble on her arm.

Where on a dark, rainy evening not even Mrs. Dalloway can keep the subway rider awake.

Where on a crisp, sunny morning a man flosses his teeth as he walks along the South edge of Central Park.

Where Asian-American parents photograph their daughters at the Kodak "Remember Your Visit to Asia" photo spot in Animal Kingdom, Orlando, Florida.

Where a lucky American is asked to take the group photo for the Traveldance team at Epcot Center.

Where Prince Charming looks like a very different historical figure.

Where on the express monorail from the Magic Kingdom to the transportation center: one very tired princess.

Where on the corner of 124th street and 2nd avenue a man holds out a hat for change and, upon receiving a dollar, says, "Thanks Cabbie and you, kid, you stay in school... Stay in school or you'll get a hat like me" and the boy's younger brother in the back seat asks, "Wait, if you stay in school you DO get a hat or you DON'T get a hat?"

Where, on the inbound Red Line T, a young man with a Germanic accent says to his even younger girlfriend, "Ya, it was really sad to see my brother on his fourtieth birthday on Skype you know with his glass of champagne just sitting there, his family already gone to bed you know but then again I'd like to be where he is when I'm that old you know with the good job and family..." and the woman says, "you would?!" and he says, "no, not really" and they both laugh heartily.

Where at Boloco Inspired Burritos in Cambridge, MA, one young man asks another, "But seriously, if I think about it first and then kill you, is it 'rational'?"

Where a mother stands across the street from her daughter's elementary school handing out fliers to passersby detailing how, on the previous day, the school nurse failed to call 911 in response to her daughter's severe asthma attack.

Where the LCD in the West 4th Street subway station offers unsolicited parenting advice.

Where on Valentine's morning a pre-teen boy with a low-slung back pack carries a small white bag with "Ruth" and a small heart written in red and struggles to keep up with his father, who, newspaper in one hand, plaid scarf swinging, who strides a half block ahead of his son.

Where in the Zabar's cheese department one woman says to another, "You're worried about money so get one, just get one, just get one, you're worried about money."

Where the test proctor at Middle School 54 shouts "Where's my broken arm?" over and over until a kid with a blue cast shuffles up to the front of the auditorium.

Where every time the downtown R train stops the man in a black cap sucks on his unlit cigar.

Where on the corner of 85th street and Amsterdam avenue two men dressed entirely in NY Giants regalia kiss tenderly on the lips.

Where the girls are reading: Detective Camp, The Invisible Tree, and The Ninth Nugget.

Where a man stops to watch a woman doing yoga poses in the storefront widow of Lululemon.

Where early on a Friday afternoon a woman begs an employee of the just-closed Kosher Marketplace to let her in for just one thing.

Where on the downtown 3 express a girl with curly blond hair and chipped black nail polish highlights a xerox of "Feminism" from Feminist Theory with a pink highlighter.

Where, on the uptown 2 express, a man accepts a bag of food from a stranger, walks to the other end of the car, looks into the bag and loudly berates the philanthropist: "I thought there was a cookie in here you said there was a cookie in here long nose hey LONG NOSE there ain't NO cookie in here! you hear me? got hair all over your body have to leave the city with hair all over your body Piccalo ain't NO cookie in here at all!"

Where parents of four year olds chatter nervously in the PS 166 auditorium and discretely and self-satisfidely ignore the sound from the hallway of a small voice crying, "I don't want to!!" and his mother's soft pleading.

Where two men wearing lady liberty costumes enjoy slices at Famiglia.

Where, as he maneuvered the 90 degree turn onto 97th Street, the tough-looking, bald-headed trucker belted out, "Don't care if it's Chinatown or on Riverside..." as he blasted Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind"from the cab of his big rig.

Where the white plastic chair seems to have lost.

Where the boy says into his red plastic cellphone, "Are you trying to be mean to me?... Well then what is healthy?... So then use apples!... Yeah, fight them with apples!... 'Common, are you Punisher or not? Then act like it!"

Where in the window of the newest cupcake shop on the cupcake-shop-saturated Upper West Side one man sits alone.

Where a boy, inspired by nature, reinvents a phrase he's never heard: "It's so cold it hurts... yeah, it hurts."